Tag: Nature is a Bad Teacher - Jude

Jude 1:10

But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Tag: Nature is a Bad Teacher

Jude is a short little book in the New Testament and one of the last books added to the cannon of Scripture. There was some dispute as to its inclusion to the Scriptures.  The book was written to warn the early Church about the false teachers who had crept in among them.  Jude’s message is that, like false speakers in the past (no matter their form), so, too, these false teachers will be judged and destroyed.   The reason for their destruction?   The above verse lays out Jude’s argument.   These were teachers who were “blasphemous” of the Gospel message.  They denied the Savior, and, as John taught us, they were thus “antichrist.”

1 John 2:22

Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.

As Jude states in his inspection of these teachers, they did not “underhand” the Gospel.   Instead of obeying, by faith, the teaching of the Apostles, these blasphemers, instead, relied upon their own “instincts.”   The Greek word in the above text translated “instinctively” is “physikōs.”    It is where we would get the English word ‘physical” from.  It means their “natural” understanding.  We might say their “intuition” was giving them understanding.   That “physikos” led these false teachers, not the Word of God.   When we rely upon our natural instincts and intuition to make decisions or to lead us in a direction, and those instincts and intuition are contrary to God’s Word, we become blasphemous in our living.   This happens to many, who refuse to trust in God’s Word and who rely on what their own imaginations and own natures tell them.   God demands we allow His Word to trump our own reasonings and our own false arguments.   When we rely upon “physikos” we will fail in our walk with Christ.